Russia's education minister has said he has no power to ban children's exercise books featuring a portrait of Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin that have gone on sale in Moscow causing public condemnation.

Andrei Fursenko said he disapproved of the notepads but there was no legal mechanism by which he could prevent shops stocking them.

"What can I do? What can anyone do?" he told reporters on Tuesday. "It doesn't break the law: anybody can print anything they like. Pornography is forbidden, Nazi symbols are forbidden. And everything else – who can ban that?"

Members of Russia's Public Chamber, a government watchdog, condemned the jotters when they went on sale this week.

The glossy cover of the exercise books – from a series called Great Names of Russia - features an airbrushed portrait of the dictator wearing rows of medals, above the inscription "Generalissimo Stalin".

"This looks strange and savage in today's world," said Sergei Volkov, a teacher of Russian literature and a member of the Public Chamber.

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"Yes, Stalin was a historical and state figure, but he was a criminal, he killed many people. And if you are going to print such exercise books then you need to write 'Murderer' in big letters on them."

Mr Volkov compared the publication to printing a pad with "Hitler's swastika" on the cover.

The publisher, Alt, has refused to withdraw from sale the controversial exercise books, which are sold in a series that includes Catherine the Great and composer Sergei Rakhmaninov. It said that an objective biography of Stalin on the final pages of the notepad explains that hundreds of thousands of people were shot during his Great Terror in the 1930s.

However, Nikolai Svanidze, another member of the Public Chamber, said that was no excuse. "When a child sees this sumptuous cover with a handsome mustachioed Stalin, then [the latter] is already a hero," he said. "In educational terms, this is just total depravity."